Currently, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. They have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare. 

By cutting their targets off from the Western financial system, sanctions can crush national industries, erase personal fortunes and upset the balance of political power in troublesome regimes—all without putting a single American soldier in harm’s way.

In 2003, North Korea withdrew from a nuclear weapons treaty, prompting Treasury officials under President George W. Bush to not only target the Macao bank that processed payments for Pyongyang (North Korea's capital), but also to threaten any banks that traded with that one. The measures stymied Pyongyang's finances.

“It was a pivotal moment,” says Kristen Patel, Donald P. and Margaret Curry Gregg Professor of Practice in Korean and East Asian Affairs. “Treasury got the go-ahead to start pounding things with this hammer.”

Read more in the Washington Post article, “How Four U.S. Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.”